We are the Afghan people
We are Afghans
from mountains
We are the Afghan people
We are Afghans
from mountains
We have the same faith
and tradition
We have the same
religion and ideal
We have the same faith
and tradition
We have the same
religion and ideal
We are the Afghan people
We are Afghans
from mountains

Hallo, caring viewers,
and welcome to
Good People, Good Works
on Supreme Master
Television.
Today’s program highlights
Dr. Louise Pascale’s
Afghan Children's
Songbook Project,
which works
to revive and promote
the beautiful, traditional
children’s music
of Afghanistan.

Dr. Pascale is
a former United States
Peace Corps volunteer
in Afghanistan
and is currently
an Associate Professor
of Creative Arts
and Learning at
Lesley University, USA.
Now let’s learn more
from Dr. Pascale about
the Project and its origins.

It originally started,
in 1966, when
I was in the Peace Corps.
I went to Afghanistan
as a 22 year old.
And I first was asked
to teach English,
which I did, to boys who
lived in the provinces.
I had just graduated
from college, and I got
a degree in education
and in music,
and I was interested
in whether the children
were singing in schools.
So I worked
with some people
who were helping me out,
and they said that I could
go in and teach songs.

So I found an Afghan poet
and an Afghan musician,
and we together, because
I didn't know the songs,
they helped me.
I wrote the songs down;
they sang them to me,
because I didn't have
a tape recorder.
And then I went
and taught the children
the songs and
they drew all the pictures.

In 1968, 3,000 copies of
Dr. Pascale’s collection
of songs and
children’s illustrations
was published
by the Kabul Press
and distributed
throughout Afghanistan.
Soon afterwards,
Dr. Pascale completed
her volunteer work
in Afghanistan
and returned to the US.

Sadly, during the 1990s
and early 2000s,
when Afghanistan faced
internal strife,
much of the country’s
cultural heritage
and traditional arts,
including its music,
were lost.
Feeling deeply concerned,
in 2003
Dr. Pascale decided
to take action on behalf
of the Afghan people.

So about that time,
I looked in
my bookcase and
I found my old song book.
And I stood in
my living room and held it
and thought, "Wow,
this may be the only copy
of those 16 songs
that is left, because
if in fact everything
was destroyed, maybe
there isn't anything left,
and it's been so long.
It’s almost 20 years
since people
have sung these songs.

So I vowed that I would
return them somehow.
And I really, actually
didn't have any idea
how I would do that.
But that's kind of
how it all got started.
It was a small idea.
I just thought
I would get the songs
back to the children.

After consulting
many individuals
and organizations,
Dr. Pascale was fortunate
enough to encounter
Mr. Vaheed Kaacemy,
a well-known and respected
Afghan musician living
in Toronto, Canada.

So I started finding people
that I could talk to about it.
And in the end,
there were
a few people that
were very, very important
to the Project.
One was Vaheed Kaacemy,
who's the musician
who I worked with,
who lives in Toronto
and also in Kabul.
And he was,
when he saw a copy
of the old song book,
he actually burst into tears
he was so excited
to see these songs again.

Mr. Kaacemy
joined the Project
and began working on
producing a new version
of the song book.
He did research,
arranged songs, rehearsed
and finally recorded
16 songs in Pashto,
Hazaragi, Uzbeki and Dari.
All the songs were sung
by Afghan children
living in Toronto.

There's 16
in the original song book.
It had 16 songs and
the children's drawings
are here.
This is a copy,
so it's not great quality.
What Vaheed did was
go through
this song book and
choose most of these songs,
but it had been so long
that I didn't know where
the songs came from,
who composed them,
where the music was from,
so he did incredible
research on each song.
So the new song book
also has 16 songs,
but a couple of them
are different
from this song book.

The new, 24-page
song book, entitled
“Qu Qu Qu Barg-e-Chinaar:
Children’s Songs
from Afghanistan,”
contains lyrics
to all the songs
printed in Dari along with
colorful illustrations
by the children
and some drawings
from the 1968 publication.
An English version
has also been produced
with translations
and transliterations
of each song.

The National Geographic
Society also
helped fund the Project,
which enabled
Dr. Pascale to print
the first 3,000 copies
of the song book in 2006.
And with
financial assistance from
the wife of the former
Afghan ambassador
to the United States,
Ms. Shamim Jawad,
the books,
each of which included
a CD and cassette tape,
were distributed to
schools and orphanages
across Afghanistan
the next year.

Mrs. Shamim Jawad was
the person I went to visit
in Washington, DC (USA)
when I was just checking
to see if it was a good idea,
and I had her listen to
a couple of the songs
Vaheed had recorded
with the children, and
she put on the earphones,
she listened and then
she just said, “Oh!”
She got so excited, she said,
"I haven't heard this song
since I was a child."
She said,
"Oh, you have to do this,
you have to do this!”

To date, there's 25,000
copies of the song book
out to elementary schools,
and orphanages and
some women’s centers.
And they’re
all over Afghanistan,
not just in Kabul.
And we’re right now
ready to get
5,000 more out and
in the spring there will be
another 5,000.
I’m hoping
by the spring when
we do the second 5,000,
we’ll also have
the teacher’s guide,
to go along so that
people will deliver
the song books and then
give the teacher this book.

All the song books,
which are given
to pre-schools, schools
and orphanages
in Afghanistan
free of charge, are being
used both as music texts
and as tools
to promote literacy.

We didn’t know this when
we started the Project,
that it’s also helping
the women learn to read
because one of the effects
of being at war so long
is that
a lot of women grew up
not learning to read,
so the Songbook Project
has actually helped
the women who are now
singing to their kids
and the whole thing
is working out

Dr. Pascale believes
that music is essential
to the development of
Afghanistan’s children,
and that teachers
play an important role in
facilitating their learning
through music and song.

I spent a lot of my life
teaching music and
working in education
and first of all music,
I think, defines culture and
it’s a part of who we are.
In fact, one Afghan said
when they took our music,
they took our soul.
So it’s pretty important
that we keep music alive
and we keep singing
the songs, our children’s,
our own songs.

But also music is an
incredibly powerful way
to teach reading
and other subjects.
So when children
actually have rhythm
in their body
and they’re singing,
they are more apt to
learn to read easily, and
research has shown that.
And the teachers
themselves have very
little education, maybe
sixth-grade education.
They have no books
in the school and
no paper and no pencils.
And they have a small,
small blackboard, that’s it.
So it’s really hard
and they want to improve
literacy in that country.

So I’m going to try
to suggest that when we
give out the little books,
we have a teacher’s guide.
I would like to
put in this package now
a blank notebook
for the children
and a pencil.
In the United States
there’s a song called
“Old MacDonald.”
Well, there’s
a kind of song like that,
an Ali Baba song.

It talks about Ali Baba
and his garden.
And in this garden
he has a rabbit
and he has a goat
and he has a dog, and
he has all sorts of things.
So, it would be great for
them to draw those animals
and then write
what they are underneath
to practice writing,
and then maybe
come up with new animals
and write what they are,
and then write
what they say and
how does that word sound,
what does it start with.

Ali Baba goes
to the garden,
he has a lamb
in this garden,
it goes baa baa baa,
What else does he have?

Ali Baba goes
to the garden,
he has a cat
in this garden,
it goes meow meow meow,
What else does he have?

Ali Baba goes
to the garden,
he has a dog
in this garden,
it goes woof woof woof
What else does he have?

Dr. Pascale
has seen first-hand how
the Songbook Project
is bringing great joy to
Afghanistan’s children.

When I went back
to Afghanistan,
I wanted to see really
how the song book
was being used.
Some children,
they’ve had the book
for a couple of years,
some places.
So I visited orphanages,
I visited kindergartens
and I found that the
children really treasure
this little book and
they know all the songs,
they can sing all the songs,
every one of them,
and they’re just delighted.

One of the songs
that Vaheed added
to the song book
was an alphabet song.
He took an old melody
and he said they need
an alphabet song,
and so it was great to see
the kids learning that and
singing and following along
with their finger, and
that’s when I got the idea,
“Wow, we could
use this much more
to teach reading
than we are.”

And I think it’s just giving
the teachers the ideas
because they themselves
weren’t taught that way.
In Afghanistan
most of the teaching is
by rote and that’s all,
so I think
all we have to do is just
give them a few ideas,
and I think it’ll really help,
and maybe
if we’re lucky enough
we can someday produce
a second song book.

What is Dr. Pascale’s
dream for the future?

My wish is that
everyone keeps singing,
that and certainly I wish
for a peaceful world,
and that we really
will see Afghanistan come
to a peaceful settlement.
Yes, we want to keep music
alive around the world.

Dr. Louise Pascale,
we sincerely thank you and
the generous supporters
of the Afghan Children’s
Songbook Project for
bringing so much delight
and hope to young ones
in Afghanistan.
We pray that your dream
will soon come true
and beautiful music will
thrive and expand forever
in the lives of all Afghans
and people across the globe.

We are the Afghan people
We are Afghans
from mountains
We are the Afghan people
We are Afghans from mountains
We have the same faith
and tradition
We have the same
religion and ideal
We have the same faith
and tradition
We have the same religion and ideal
We are the Afghan people
We are Afghans from mountains

For more details
on the Afghan Children's
Songbook Project,
please visit
www.AfghanSongBook.org
“Qu Qu Qu Barg-e-Chinaar:
Children’s Songs
from Afghanistan,”
is available
at the same website

Happy viewers,
thank you for watching
today’s program.
May all lives be filled
with the soft stream
of Heaven’s music.